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Preface/Acknowledgments
Chapters 11 and 12 explore the critical management func-
tion of planning, including operational planning and budgeting.
These sections are placed last so that you first get an under- xiii
standing of the things you typically plan for—profits, cash flow,
and financing the business—before you get into the planning
itself.
It’s my hope that you’ll refer to sections of this book many
times over, long after you have finished the first read. By using
this book as an ongoing reference, you will reinforce the lessons
it contains and find new ways to use it with each reading.

Special Features
The idea behind the books in the Briefcase Series is to give you
practical information written in a friendly, person-to-person
style. The chapters deal with tactical issues and include lots of
examples. They also feature numerous boxes designed to give
you different types of specific information. Here’s a description
of the boxes you’ll find in this book.

These boxes do just what they say: give you tips and
tactics for using these ideas to understand and use
financial information to manage intelligently.

These boxes provide warnings for where things could
go wrong when you’re getting involved in financial
analysis and transactions.

These books give you how-to hints for collecting, ana-
lyzing, and using financial information.

Every subject has some special jargon and terms—
finance more than most. These boxes provide defini-
tions of these terms.